Alexander Arnold Constantine Issigonis was not influenced by cars in his infancy. He was 12 before he saw one. Maybe that's why, at 50, he was able to reinvent the automobile completely. His Mini was like nothing else. Alec Issigonis could think out of the box. He hated the rigidity of mathematics, which he failed three times at Battersea Polytechnic in London. He called pure mathematics "the enemy of every truly creative man."

The Mini, the Minor and the Austin 1100 he designed are among the five top-selling cars in British history. And his packaging ideas are the foundation of modern small-car design, living on in every front-wheel-drive passenger vehicle with a sideways-mounted engine on the road.